The pyramid of Merkinė, constructed by Povilas Žėkas in the southern part of Lithuania in 2002, began within the Lithuanian Roman Catholic milieu only to develop years later into an independent religious movement. In this article, I analyze the history and development of the pyramid in light of changes affecting religions in Lithuania during the last twenty-five years of religious liberty. I will examine the binding relationship of religion, nationalism, and resistance in Lithuania as the Pyramid of Merkinė became a place of spiritual pilgrimage, connecting the religious life of Communist and post-Communist Lithuanian society.

The introduction to this special issue on new religions in Eastern Europe provides a historical background on the place of new religious movements in the region during the Soviet and post-Soviet era. This includes the varieties of new and alternative religions active in these societies and how this changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The guest editor notes several main directions of scholarly research focusing on these new religions and summarizes the four articles included in this special issue, which focus on the Lithuanian neoshamanic community, the pyramid of Merkinė in Lithuania, marketing and branding strategies of contemporary spirituality movements in Estonia, and the Last Testament Church in Siberia, Russia.